Steppe in Style: adventures in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Eight miles west of Turpan, still in the oasis, is the ancient ruined city of Jiaohe. It is in the confluence of two rivers (Jiaohe means ‘the city of joining rivers’) and surrounded by greenery. Yet the city itself is nothing but golden sand and ruined sandy walls.  Screened by precipitous cliffs, Jiaohe, built on…

There is something brutal and intimidating about the Registan that is not unlike the communist-era architecture of Tashkent. The former Emir’s palace is in a walled citadel raised on a huge mound above the expanse of dark flagstones.  The square is empty except for a handful of tourists and some small children begging, but it…

There is little sign in central Bukhara of 150 years of Russian rule. The streets are too narrow for cars here, the people are covered from neck to foot, many of the men wearing cotton skullcaps, and family life is hidden behind the crumbling walls.  Vines cling to the pillars and tiles in the courtyard…

In the outskirts of Bukhara, marshrutkas are zooming round the ring-road that circles the old town. We find one that will take us around to the house where Fayzulla Khujayev, who helped the Bolsheviks to plot against the last Emir and later led the Bukhara People’s Republic, used to live.  His family were wealthy traders,…

My mother is trying to say something to me.  “WHAT?” I bellow at her, taking out one of my earplugs and letting in the deafening roar of the plane’s engines.  “THESE ARE JUST LIKE THE ONES THEY HAD WHEN I FLEW TO NEW YORK IN THE SIXTIES!” yells back my mother, indicating the cramped interior…

Bright sunlight, pouring through the carriage window, wakes me as we approach Bukhara. The modern city of Tashkent has disappeared, replaced by a desert landscape of rocks, golden sand and parched earth. On the horizon is a shimmering lake as bright and sparkling blue as the sky above us. At first, the only signs of…

Reading about Boris Hrabovskiy and the television at the history museum yesterday aroused my curiosity. I suggest going to the 375 metre high Tashkent TV tower, the tallest building in Central Asia, where we can get a view over the city.  Although we take a taxi to what looks like the nearest road to the…

I assumed it would be easy to find a working ATM and get cash in Tashkent. I was wrong.  Unlike in Bishkek, where there are six downtown cashpoints and practically every shop and kiosk for two blocks along Soviet Street is a bureau de change, getting cash in Tashkent becomes a day-long challenge for me…

Sunday is beautiful – a bright sun in a clear blue sky, a light breeze ruffling the leaves, and the mountains gleaming white in the distance. It’s just the day for a trip to Kara-Balta, a former uranium processing city that was closed to the world during the Soviet era.  In honour of the occasion,…

We have a day off for International Women’s Day, 8 March, and I’ve arranged to go to Twelve Chimneys — twelve mountains clustered round a gorge in the Ala-Too, not far from Bishkek — with my new American colleague and a friend I met when we were both stuck at Istanbul airport in January.  I…